1. Relationship Words in the Word
- Relationship Words in the Word.
“For God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son, that whoever believes into Him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16).
The word “relationship” is a relatively new word, first used in 1744, that tries to sum up many old ideas. This very modern word is not even mentioned in the Bible, but the concept is as old as the hills, as ancient as creation, as eternal as the Trinity. So there are a truckload of terms and ideas in Scripture that describe different aspects of relationship, words like fellowship, community, active participation, partnership, indwell, kin, with, union, presence. We have biblical titles like Emmanuel and Paraclete. And we can find biblical pictures of relationship in marriage, friendship, companionship, and family. Even the word “knowledge” is a relationship word. There is one Greek term, though, that we’ll discuss later in this series, and it seems to come closest to “relationship,” and that New Testament word is “koinonia.” But maybe we should start at the beginning. Actually, relationship began before the beginning, in the Holy Trinity.
How about the most basic of questions… Why did God create mankind? He didn’t need to, because He is utterly and eternally complete within the intimate communion of the Trinity. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit have enjoyed the most intimate of relationship forever, before time, outside of time, for all time. This divine Threesome share an interrelatedness that is far beyond our understanding. The Trinity is the Original Relationship, the deepest personal communion imaginable, a unity of love and connection. The Three Persons are so intertwined that they are somehow inside each other.
So God doesn’t really need us as if we could complete Him in any way. One simple way to look at this basic question is this… God created humanity because God is love. There is so much love in Love that within the bonds of their unity there exists an insatiable desire to extend their relationship of love outside of Themselves, with us! God created humankind in order to share their love and enjoy an intimate fellowship with the likes of us! Creator God wanted to spread around His love and not keep it in-house. He is so full of love that He wanted to create people in His image with whom He could develop a friendship. God created us to have deep fellowship with Him, and He gets great joy out of that loving relationship with each of us. He didn’t create us because it would complete Him in some way, He created us knowing that friendship with Him would complete us!
Relationship with Creator God is, then, the whole point of our existence, our friendship with the Lord is the center-point of mankind’s life purpose and meaning. We humans can find our significance only in a relationship with God, and He has set in place our destiny to be in union with Him.
So in the beginning, God desired fellowship with the people He made. God wanted to include mankind in their intimate friendship enjoyed within the Trinity. It would go against the grain of God’s character and purpose to exclude Himself from man’s companionship. Then sin entered the world and disrupted God’s plan for fellowship with us, and our relationship with God was fractured. But even then, God followed the fallen friends into exile. God was determined to stay with His sinful, exiled creatures, and any distance between them was the effects of sin between man and God. Throughout the old covenant, it seemed that thoughtful people lived in fear of God’s abandonment. And yet they continued to sin to create that distance. But God never gave up on humanity. He continued to make Himself available to those who sought Him in repentance and righteousness and faith.
Finally, in the fullness of time, God brought forth Himself into the sinful world in an unprecedented, unique divine intervention. His intervention is called the Incarnation. The Rev. Dr. Sam Wells once said in a sermon, “God is seeking genuine relationship with us so earnestly that He became one of us without ceasing to be God. In fact, creation owes its existence as the theatre in which God would become one of us and dwell with us. That is the purpose behind existence. Creation came about as a theatre for God to be with us in Christ, that we would become God’s companions forever.” So God knew all along, even before creation, that He would need to send forth the Son in order to restore His broken relationship with humanity.
This blog series named “Relationship Words in the Word” will try to tackle many of these biblical ideas as we remind ourselves that Trinitarian love is the engine for the universe and His motivation for fellowship with each of us. God’s interior relationship within the three of Them is the source of all the divine energy needed to enjoy intimate communion with God and with each other.
In our age now of Facebook “friends,” “relationships” with robots, “dialogue” with AI, and an epidemic of loneliness, is there a better time to study the Biblical basis for relationship?